The real America that Whitman proclaimed and Thoreau decoded.

There should be no distinction between what we write down, and what we really know.

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

The combination of drugs, homosexuality, some good prose recited on screen. . . . In the sweat lodge ceremony we went through, did you get any glimpse of the Ugly Spirit, what that was historically or biographically?

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!